Television producers Toni Cruz and Josep Maria Mainat, creators of the Operación Triunfo contest, announced yesterday that they have filed a lawsuit for alleged plagiarism of the Eufòria program from TV3, after they already warned in the summer of taking legal action due to the great similarity between the two formats. As reported yesterday by Reset TV, the current production company of Mainat i Cruz, the lawsuit is directed against Veranda Media, producer of Eufória, and against the CCMA. Sources from Veranda and the Catalan Corporation pointed out that at the moment they have not received any demand and that, therefore, they cannot assess a complaint that they have not seen.
After analyzing the content of Eufória, Cruz and Mainat contacted the CCMA to obtain “some satisfactory explanation” of what they considered a “blatant copy of their creation”; however, given the lack of answers, they have decided to take legal action, they said in a statement.
According to Cruz and Mainat, before filing the lawsuit they made sure that their impression was corroborated “by wide sectors of the specialized press, by important figures in the television industry and by the analysis of experts in the field who , after the corresponding examination of the two formats, have concluded that Eufòria is simply an Operación Triunfo in Catalan”.
“Euphória reproduces, with minute variations, all the essential elements, the mechanics, the phases and the original aspects of Operación Triunfo”, says Cruz, and Mainat adds that OT “has been exported to more than 70 television channels throughout the world, and they have all recognized our authorship. It is disconcerting that the plagiarism takes place precisely in Catalonia and on TV3”.
A few hours after the announcement, in addition to denying having received the demand, the CCMA assured that it “fully trusts Veranda with regard to the originality of the format”, which arose as a sequel to oh happy day
Eufória is part of the tradition of musical talent shows in which a group of unknown people go out to sing in front of a television audience, are evaluated by a jury, rehearse before the performances, sing songs known to the audience, continue or they leave the program according to the evaluations received, and they do all this to make their artistic aspirations come true”. All these characteristics are shared by most musical talent shows, “because they are precisely what define the genre”, maintains Veranda Media.
Beyond the genre, Eufória’s production company assures that there are a series of elements that “differentiate” the programs, such as the visual presentation, the conduct of the program, the locations, the sets, the profiles of the contestants or the rules of the competition “The originality of these elements and the particular articulation in each program is what determines the original format”, he emphasizes.
